Selma Lou

From The Whole Shebang

I may be the only one who thinks this, but I think Fluid Ounces could become a country act with only slight changes made to the way many of the songs are played. The wordplay is cleverer than anything you’ll find in country music, but it is a lyrical structure used in country much more than the pop rock world. Early favorites like “Drought,” “Comfortable,” and (dare I say?) “Record Stack” could become country music without too many changes, as “Poet Tree” and almost any song from The Whole Shebang or Instant Nostalgia could definitely qualify. I’ve often wondered why Seth Timbs hasn’t tried shopping these songs among the suits on music row (especially while he was working for them) to see if any larger country act might use the songs, creating a new way to breathe life into the tunes, earning some money for his efforts from days of yore, and helping to create more of a name for himself simply as a songwriter.

It took Seth Timbs moving to Los Angeles to finally write and record an all-out country song (after seeing too many Felix Wiley shows, as he said when I first heard this song performed in 2003), and I think it could be the front runner for his attempts at marketing his music in Nashville’s big business. The band has gradually increased the tempo of this number as they’ve performed it over the last few years, making it even easier to imagine a bluegrass band picking up this song and making a radio hit of it.

The story is entirely fabricated, perhaps a little inspired by the film Cool Hand Luke, in which prison workers stop and salivate as an attractive female sexily washes her car while they are forced to watch and continue their labors. The version we get is that of a laborer working for the local Southern aristocrat on an expansive farm who meets his boss’s daughter and has a short-lived affair with her. He simultaneously revels in feelings the playtime sparked in him and laments that it was meaningless to her, with its good-as-gold chorus, “Selma Lou, this whole world’s gonna fall in love with you/ and I think I might do it too.”

The live mp3 is another performance from Steve Cross's radio show in which Seth Timbs plays acoustic guitar and Brian G. Pitts plays bass.

Download Live mp3